Tuesday, April 15, 2008

MIT Takes a Pass on Discipline

At MIT Sloan Group, the management school of amazing genius, because as we know, everyone at MIT is a genius, decided to take a pass on any form of discipline for a student accused of sending a "homophobic, threatening email" the Sloan LGBT Group.

(Actually, everyone I've ever met who went to MIT really, honestly is a genius. )"The offending e-mail was a response to an invitation sent out by the Sloan Lesbian, Gay, and Transgender Club to an end-of-semester celebration. The response reads in part: “If you fucking fags send me something like that once again or contact me in any other way, I swear you won’t be able to study at Sloan for some time because you will spend it at resuscitation department. If this is what you want, go ahead.” The full message is available online along with a response from the LGBT group at http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N18/sloan/"

So after appearing in front of the MIT's Committee on Discipline, the student who sent the email was not expelled or suspended. It is unclear if any action was taken.

It's great to see the future executives of our country are not faced with the same ramifications they would experience in the real business world. Anyone making such statements to a coworker in most of the Fortune 500 companies would be fired. Most have policies in place to protect sexual orientation.

It is an interesting question to ask- what exactly are they teaching at MIT?

(and as a note, thank you to whoever sent this article to me! I will take it up with a couple alumni I know)

I think I worked for that guy's mom! (and got fired by her too, because her "Christian company can't have a gay on staff")Sadly, there are still a lot of people out here in the real world with this attitude. We, the working class gays and lesbians, have to educate the lawmakers to the harsh truth that there, in fact, is a need for laws to protect us from such discriminations in the workplace, in school, and elsewhere. Otherwise, we will continue to be fired, beaten, and harassed. Here, in my state, legislation to protect sexual orientation under the EEOC has been dismissed time and again because, they say, there is no real need for it. Puh-lease! It's an apathetic politician's pittance of an excuse to not do the right thing because it does not affect him/her directly. Apathy and ignorance are the toughest obsticles to overcome.